State officials push pediatric vaccine as new COVID cases continue growing locally (free to read) | Local/Regional

The number of new COVID-19 cases in Bradford County continues to climb week after week, according to the latest COVID-19 Dashboard data from the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

In the week leading up to Friday’s report, the Department of Health said Bradford County had 186 new confirmed COVID-19 cases. The week before, there were 126 new confirmed cases and 91 confirmed cases two weeks earlier. The department also reported 10 additional COVID-19-related deaths in the past three weeks, with one of those deaths occurring in the past week.

There also seem to be more new cases in children lately. The Ministry of Health reported that between October 27 and November 2, there were 16 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in children aged 0 to 4 and 50 in children aged 5 to 18. Going back to between October 13 and October 19, there were seven cases among those 0 to 4 and 32 among those 5-18.

The Department of Health noted that the number of COVID-19 cases among school-aged children statewide is nearly three times higher than in 2020.

Earlier this week, Pfizer’s pediatric vaccine received emergency use approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help protect children ages 5 to 11 from COVID-19.

Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics President Dr. Trude Haecker noted that children make up a quarter of COVID-19 patients.

“It’s exciting to see parents queuing up to have their children vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus that caused this pandemic,” Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam said at a news conference held Thursday in Scranton. .

Beam expected 414,000 doses of the vaccine to be distributed to suppliers statewide by the end of the week, with additional deliveries to be ramped up by the CDC in the coming weeks.

“The vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 is a big step towards the pandemic,” Beam said. “I say to fellow parents: if you have a child between the ages of 5 and 11, have them vaccinated and give your child the strength to learn, play and be a child safely.”

In Bradford County, 21,146 Bradford County residents have been fully vaccinated against the virus.

At midnight on Thursday, 35 COVID-19 patients had been hospitalized in Bradford County, with six patients in the ICU and on a ventilator.

According to the DOH’s COVID-19 Early Warning Monitoring System dashboard, average daily hospital admissions due to COVID-19 increased from 33.9 between October 20 and October 29 to 37.4 between October 29 and November 4. The average number of COVID-19 patients requiring ventilators went from 5.3 to 6.3 between these two periods, while the percentage of emergency room visits made up of COVID-19 patients went from 1.6% to 2.9 % went.